Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Would you be able to resist this face? At less than a year old, this gorgeous cat named Pangur Ban has already managed to invade his human's webcomic! Taking one look at those big, blue eyes, I think it's pretty easy to see how!

Pangur Ban's story begins with his owners, Holly Golightly, and her husband Jim Balent. He pretty much hit the jackpot right there, because a comic loving kitty could not ask for a better pair of human caretakers!

Holly has been a professional comic book artist for 15 years, and has worked on popular characters such as "Josie & The Pussycats," "Sabrina," "CosmoGirl," and more, while Jim was the DC artist on "Catwoman" (a Catsparella favorite!) for 7 years!

Back in 2000, the couple founded their own company, BroadSword Comics, and Holly G. started her owntitle called "School Bites," which she describes as, "Sort of Harry Potter meets Sixteen Candles but with fangs."

This past year, Holly transformed her manga into a successful webcomic, and as of late, their new Balinese kitten, Pangur Ban has been demanding Fridays as his feature day!

First sketch of Pangur's comic counterpart

Holly sent me a few of Pangur's "Kittygarden School" strips that have been uploaded so far, and you can check out more, plus the rest of her webcomic at www.schoolbites.net, or on the COMICS+ app under the BroadSword Comicspublisher's listing.

(Click images to enlarge!)

Still learning a lot..

Six-month birthday celebration!

Steam punk kitten loves getting gifts!

After reading the strips, I wanted to know more about how Pangur Ban came into Holly and Jim's lives, and I thought some of my feline readers might be equally interested in learning how one goes about taking over their owner's webcomic.

Fortunately for all of us, Holly was nice enough to share the entire Pangur Ban tale with us!

Read on for more!

Bewitching Bru

"Our kitty story...I'd say it starts with an ending. Our precious black cat, Brujah, who was the inspiration to Jim's character Pooka, passed over after 16 wonderful years with us."

Pooka the Goblin Cat

"Because of Bru's medical struggles, my heart couldn't bear having a new kitty that might have intense medical needs, so we decided to check into a breeder.

We'd recently seen the film, The Secret of Kells, that featured a white kitty called Pangur Ban. It was a song to him that made me totally lose it, it was so beauty!"

Holly got it in her head that she wanted a white cat, and had heard that Burmese kitties were very sweet, so she got right to work investigating!

"We found a wonderful site called Kittentanz, and there I saw an all white fuzzyball! AND they had a live cam so you could see the kitties play.

I contacted them and they put the white cat and his Balinese brother in the cam room. The white kitten kind of stayed to himself, but his bro (the soon to be Pangur Ban) cuddled the breeder, Michelle! His personality just shone through the internet...and love was in the air! Of course we thought about taking both of them, but I've always thought I'm a one cat kinda gal...

The breeder being in Georgia, got Pangur his airplane tickets and he flew first class to his new family on December 31st!

I felt like we were adopting a baby from China - and he's perfect!"

Pangur indulging in some kitten yoga after a hard day's work

"I had never raised a kitten before - all my other kitties I adopted from the ASPCA in NYC when they were around a year old, so I was a little nervous and relied on all those episodes of "It's Me or the Dog" to train him...Well they don't have a "Train Your Cat" TV show - do they?!!! (Ed note: Not that I know of!)

But Pangur's character was so uber from day one, that my comic book brain just saw everyday with him as a comic strip!

Usually I had pin-ups or extras on my webcomic, but I just HAD to draw Pangur!!"

And that, Holly says, is how the "Kittygarden" strip began, and how she can rightfully claim that her cat invaded her webcomic!

***

Enormous thanks to Holly for providing so many great pictures, and for sharing the story of Pangur Ban with us!

Be sure to check out "Kittygarden School" when it appears on Fridays as part of her "School Bites" webcomic. For more information, visit the official "School Bites" and BroadSword Comics sites, and follow them on Twitter for all of the latest udpates!

Pangur Ban seems to have such a personality, Holly does a great job in her comics. I my self have 4 cats & they are all so different from each other. Iv done the hole kitty training thing & its hard lol When Holly shows it in her friday comic, I realy wana see what her little bundle of fluff is up to next ! :)